Tuesday may 29, 2012

Good afternoon!  I hope you are all well.  I just got back from bible study and decided it was a good time to update everybody because this was my first day at school implementing my ideas in small groups.  I might have mentioned this earlier, but Monday's are our days off so yesterday we went into town for lunch with Katherine.  There's a really good restaurant in town called chat n chinos that is run by a Ugandan whose parents are involved in another ministry here.  The restaurant owners good friend is a muzungu and she helped him put the menu together so it's kinda become a muzungu hangout.  Anyways,  so at school this morning Amanda and I started our pull out groups n both classes.  We pulled the lower kids in the nursery class first for an hour and each had half of the group.  I took the lower half and we went over letter flash cards that I made.  It was a little more frustrating than I anticipated, but I definitely see potential for progress and learning.  The biggest challenge with the nursery class I think is going to be a girl named Nora.  Nora was severely malnourished growing up so she is very far behind developmentally and has been in the nursery class for 4 years now- Nora is 13 years old in a class with 3-6 year olds.  She has much difficulty retaining information and staying on task, but she is one of the sweetest kids in the class!  She tries very hard and in the classroom I try and work with her one on one when it's time for writing skills.  The other children treat her the very same that they treat each other, which is a blessing because she is so great with the little ones and she always has a smile on her face..      Amanda and I have come to discover that the school system here kinda skips basic skills. The children don't understand the concept of what sounds letters make or even how to identify letters.  I keep praying for patience because I can already tell this is gonna test it.  I've decided I'm gonna make a matching game with capital and lower case letters as well as just small flash cards with letters on them so I can lay them out and ask them to hand me the letter a and so on.  Any other ideas?  Keep in mind our resources are very limited :/ but I'm willing to be creative!      As for me,  I can still feel the devil poking at my insecurities and vulnerabilities, but I also feel the lord strengthening me and creating defenses around me.  I get homesick often but luckily I've become pretty decent at thinking it through and reminding myself that I need to take each day as it comes and really take advantage of the days or else I'll get home and look back and regret and feel ridiculous about wasting all this time.  Again, I'm so appreciative of all your love and support here because it helps keep me going.  I ask that you pray for the school and that God will really use all of us to encourage everyone here and use them to teach us.  Please pray for Nora and the other children of the Genesis primary school that they will be able to be on the same level as their peers in the near future so they can move up next year.  Continue to pray for the people and community here and for the team coming in on Thursday.  There's a team coming from Florida that plans on evangelizing in the community and leading a crusade during the night.  I love and miss all of you!